Life Goes On

Easter Sunday! The Gospel reading for our Easter service is the one from Mark’s Gospel (16.1-8). It is an odd and somewhat unsatisfactory ending to the story in that the three women who go to the tomb and are told that Jesus is risen and are then directed to tell the disciples about that and instruct them to return to Galilee where they will see him. But the final verse says they were afraid and told no one. Scholars say that the earliest forms of this Gospel ended there. The person who wrote this gospel, though, has been very deliberate and purpose-driven in all of it, so what might that purpose be in ending this way? Perhaps it is a challenge to hearers/readers of the Gospel to take on the responsibility of spreading the news of the resurrection of Christ. The direction to “return to Galilee” may direct us to re-read the stories of Jesus, not just for information but for transformation, and with that to realize that life has conquered death, and that we are to live every day choosing life over death and treading the steps of Jesus so that we and the world will forever be changed.